Friday March 25, 2011

So today, was a bit of a lay low day. Sort of. I had been promising Katie and Grace that we'd go out to have a looks at the shops, "just us girls", so this morning we set out. They showed me some things that they had seen in passing and we stopped to look in some places that had been too difficult to stop in with all of us. We took another look at their new favourite store, Monna Lisa, and looked at some other fun stuff. I was excited because there is a store that I love to go to in England called Accessorize (it's like Claire's only waaaaay better) and there is one here! It was great to take them because they always love the little bits that I get for them and I knew they would love the store. It's girl heaven!

After all that shopping, I thought I take them for a Ladies Lunch at the rooftop patio of la Rinascente, one of the department stores here. The view was MAGNIFICENT!!

Unfortunately, the service wasn't great. We hadn't even been acknowledged after about 20 minutes and the girls were getting hungry, so we decided to go down into the square for lunch and we had a great time!

Later that afternoon around 5, the kids were bored so I took them over to the park. Last time we were there, we were the only ones, but this time it was packed!

Katie and Liam

Grace's pebble puppy

Liam made some young friends playing soccer (that's him in the oh-so-cool fedora!)

The younger boys thought he was so cool!

Abby's pebble puppy.

That evening Chris and I had reservations for dinner. We had been looking online for somewhere nice to go and it turns out there is a rather nice restaurant about 50 metres down the street. It's called Enoteca Pinchiorri. It was voted one of the best restaurants in the world in 2005. How bad could it be?

Not bad at all!!! Oh my. So good! I'd go into more detail, but we ended up haveing about 12 or 13 courses each, included the 2 amuse bouche, the chocolate presentation, the almond ricotta cheesecake and the sorbet that came in addition to my 7 course tasting menu and Chris' 8 course tasting menu.

Some highlights were (for me at anyway) were my lobster crusted in chestnuts - it's just not 2 flavours I'd put together but it was so good, and my dessert - a hazelnut, lemon white chocolate concoction that, to me, sounded like a horrible pairing, but it was incredible. It was like the white chocolate was the mediator between the sour lemon and the bitter hazelnut and made everyone get along.

Also, the cheese course. We had a "cheese sommelier" (I don't know what else to call her!) present 24 cheeses that we got to pick from. There was a tray of milk cheese, one of goat, one of sheep and one of blue cheeses.

Easily one of the best dinners I've ever had!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Well, first, some food talk...last night for dinner, Chris didn't want pasta and was feeling a little "Italian-food" out. I had passed a Lebanese restaurant a few days ago, so we decided to try that. I was a little worried about the kids not trying stuff, but I sure didn't need to. Liam tried everything, Grace tried almost everything and the Triple Chicks tried about 60% of everything! And it was sooooo good! For dessert they gave us just a little taste (because we were so full!) of some baklava - one of my favourite desserts and it was some of the best I've ever had.

Pizza count: 32 (seriously! May I just reiterate that while the girls often share a pizza, it is an individual meal for the rest of us! They do the crust very, very thin here and you don't get gobs of cheese.)



It was just a spectacularly beautiful day today. *** WARNING**** Certain geographic regions of readers may want to skip this part...It ended up being 26 degrees today!!!

So to today...John and Dianne wanted to get out into the country side and do a wine tour, so I had booked something for them with a company that was recommended to me -

If you are in Tuscany and want to do a wine tour, do it with Tuscan Trails. They are FANTASTIC!!!

- So that morning, Chris and I were musing about what to do, and discussing the fact I would like to go on a wine tour, but Chris had no interest, so I called to see if I could tag with John and Dianne. Turns out there was plenty of room - we were the only 3 on the tour!

So Chris had the kids for the day, and the three of us set off to meet Todd, the guy from Tuscan Trails at the bridge nearest to our apartment. We were to tour 2 wineries nearby with lunch in between.

Todd was awesome. He's a Californian who married an Italian and has been here in Florence for 9 years. He trained here in Italy as a sommelier, which is a 2 1/2 course here, so he was pretty knowledgeable!

I really enjoyed it. I have what I always call wine amnesia - I can never remember anything about what I've had or where it's from or what it's called. I truly do understand a bit more about Italian wines, well, Chiantis anyway, now. We had so much fun!

Olive oil pot (it's about 4 feet high)

Those are lilac bushes in bloom!

Chris and the kids walked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo because he hadn't been there yet and it was such a beautiful day. Grace was supposed to document it for me on her camera, but she mostly forgot to take pictures! They had lunch up there...I'm a little worried what we've done to our kids as in, "How's your ravioli, Katie?" "meh, I've had better." See?!?! We've created little foodie monsters!

Tuesday March 22 and Wednesday March 23, 2011

I keep meaning to blog everyday, but these last few days it just isn't happening! Sorry! So, let me see...what's been happening.

Well, look at Hannah's flowers.

They have opened up and are soooo gorgeous!!!

I don't have many pictures from the last couple of days. John and Dianne were quite tired from their trip to Rome. We had planned their "attack", but when they got there the Rome Marathon was on, and it kind of put a big kink in the plans that we had made. They stayed by the Colisseum like we did, so we thought it would be great for them to see that first when they got there because it's so close, but that's where the finish line for the marathon was so they couldn't get anywhere near it!

Unfortunately, that meant that streets were closed and traffic was in a snarl, too. That meant that John and Dianne walked most of Sunday around Rome, and then had to cram in a bunch of stuff on Monday, so they were exhausted when they got back to Florence.

Anyway, we all had a nice, lazy Tuesday morning. For lunch, John and Dianne took us to a little place that they found on one of their first days here, and then we split up - boys and girls. The girls went to look at a few shoe stores, and Grace and Katie wanted to show Grandma their new favourite store, Monna Lisa. The boys went to look at Foot Locker (yes, that Foot Locker) because Liam saw some funky runners that he liked.

Awhile back, Abby got a Hello Kitty stuffie, and I had seen a white tiger stuffie at the dollar store, but when Hannah and I went back, it was gone, so I've been telling her for a week and a half that we'd go to the Disney Store (I know. We come to Florence to go to the Disney Store, but we've looked at everything else that might have a stuffed animal!) so today, we did that. She didn't see anything she really wanted, so we ended up meeting up with the boys and after a quick turn on the merry-go-round, went for gelato.

Daddy and Papa took the kids home and Grandma and I walked over to the street market near the San Lorenzo church to sheck out some of the leather goods. We were pretty tired after that, so we had dinner in.


Today, Papa and Grandma very graciously took the kids while Chris and I had a day to ourselves. We stopped for coffee while Chris had a quick phone call for work, and then walked to the Ponte Vecchio - Chris wanted to see the jewelery shops when they were open. We walked for a bit on the Altrarno side of the river, then up the fancy schmancy shopping street to do some window shopping. We stopped for lunch at a mozzarella bar.

There should be more mozzarella bars in the world.

We had their tasting menu and got to try 3 different kinds of buffalo mozzarella dn 2 different kinds of ricotta cheese, as well as some artisinal salamis. We slowly meandered back to the apartment, peeking in stores along the way. It was (is!) 20 degrees today, so we had a lovely, relaxing, sunny day! Thanks, John and Dianne!!!

Another view of the Ponte Vecchio from this little side alley that Chris and I found today.

So serious!

John and Dianne took the kids for lunch, and then to the Da Vinci museum here in Florence. It had some of his paintings and some reproductions and some recreations of his inventions. So, since I wasn't there, I'm going to have the kids guest blog to tell you about it!

Katie says: We saw some of Leonardo da Vinci's very cool experiments like um, the first airplane, the giant crossbow. My favourite part was a copy of  "The Last Supper". It was carved out of wood and looked like it was popping out of the picture.

Abby says: We saw a cannonball at the museum. My favourite part was seeing the cannon.
The big crossbow was pretty scary.

Hannah: We saw a water digger and a robot that was a deer that had tiger teeth and tiger claws at the front. It was a carving. (he was trying to figure out how to make robots explains Katie - a robot of a deer mixed with a tiger) My favourite part was the water digger.

Grace says: I really liked all the gears and how you could touch them and make them move. If you think about it, a lot of his inventions are similar to things that we use today.

Liam says: It was awesome! My favourite room was of a whole bunch of gears and you got to work the. They had a big wooden ball bearing contraption thing. There was a mini first excavator. There was this one room that was an octagon of mirrors. If you looked at one mirror, you could see all the sides of the object standing in the centre. It was really, really cool!

Sunday, March 20 and Monday March 21, 2011

Well, Papa and Grandma left for Rome yesterday morning.

The backpackers off to trek Rome!

We hung around for the morning. We were supposed to clean, but that didn't really happen. We decided
to go for a walk in the afternoon - Daddy wanted to see the jewelery shops on the Ponte Vecchio, but only about 1/3 of them were open, so we walked up the via Tournabuoni. It's one of the major fancy shopping streets. We knew that nothing was going to be open but it was fun to look in the windows.

Walking down the street.

We were going to sit in one of the squares to have a snack, but it was a little too breezy, so we walked home. We ate dinner in, and that was that.

Daddy making dinner.

On our walk we passed the Palazzo Strozzi, which is now a modern art museum. The only one in Florence, I believe. An exhibit of Picasso, Dali, and Miro just opened on March 12. This morning I was looking online to see if it was open today (lots of museums and galleries are closed on Mondays) and they were AND they had all this family friendly stuff! Yay!

Checking out the courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi.

So, we packed up the kids and headed over there. Unfortunately, most of the activities for kids are on the weekends, but we were able to request a "Picasso's Cube". It was a leather box (an Il Bisonte leather box, no less!) with a bunch of stuff inside to help the kids explore the art.

The Picasso Cube!

  Unfortunately, the instructions inside were all in Italian, but I was able to get the gist of most of it. Depending on the room, it had the kids focus on a different aspect of the art and had some different activities for different age groups. The first activity had colours on three different palates, and the kids had to pick which painting matched the colours on each palette. Then it talked about how these early Modernists didn't necessarily use the colours they saw, but what they felt best portrayed the meaning of the picture.

Each room also had "bite sized" pieces of the paintings on the sheet that the kids had to find the "real" picture.

The next room was all portraits, and told the kids that you could tell a lot about the person sitting in the portrait by what was included in the background, colours, body language, facial expression, etc. Included in the box was a sketching kit and the kids were to sketch what would be included in their self portrait that would tell about them.

The next room was all about still life. It talked about how artists painted things that had meaning to them, or were everyday objects that important in day to day life. It had a bag containing some things (a small tablecloth, a small coffee grinder, a pipe - the same things as in some of the pictures) and the kids were to create their own still life and sketch it if they wanted. Before this was also a bunch of pictures by Miro that were all of his home in Catalonia. Home was very important to all three painters.

The next room was all about using your other senses. I had the most trouble translating these instructions. There was a bag of lavender in the box and it talked about what senses do you use to explore this object. I think it also talked about using other senses while painting, like smelling the paint, etc, as well as getting clues from the paintings about what senses the artists were trying to "provoke" the viewer to use. Or something like that...

Did you know that Picasso made costumes for the Ballet Russe's ballet "Parade"? Me neither! They had some of them there. It was supposed to be a Cubist ballet, so they were Cubist costumes! They had a big felt board with felt shapes for the kids to make their own Cubist costumes.

Katie

Grace

Hannah's dog

Liam's Soldier

Abby's purple tower

Right before we were done, there was another interactive thing. There were postcards with a very primitive "house" shape on it and coloured pencils. It wasked you to draw or write what "home" means to you, then add your postcard to those already hanging in the room.

The kids had a blast. It was so thoughtfully done. The modern art was a nice change from all the Renaissance art we've been immersed in. We had a really fun morning.


We came home and had some quiet time, then Chris went out to look at a pen shop, and I told the kids that I'd take them to the park we discovered one street over, but the gate was locked when we got there. As we were standing there, two older men came over and asked if we wanted to look inside and I said  we wanted to play, so he unlocked the gate for us (he was, of course speaking Italian and I was speaking English!)

For kids who were "so tired from walking so much", it was no problem for them all to run for literally the next hour!!

The girls are riding their horses over in that corner.

Katie picked me a bunch of daisies.

Papa and Grandma just walked in from Rome and they are TIRED!!! I'm looking forward to hearing about their adventure.

I think we will do dinner in again tonight. I'm not sure the weary travelers want to go out again!

Musings by Sarah

You know, I've been thinking about the reactions we've been having to our kids, which is there is some disbelief, but generally it's been very positive, especially by the older generation. I think that there has been/ is such an emphasis on family in Italy...family is extremely important to them, but Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. I would think for this generation who is expecting to soon become grandparents, it must be quite different to not have grandkids, or only one when you've had this "legacy" of large family for generations. Perhaps that makes no sense whatsoever.

Just a thought.

March 19, part 2

I wasn't able to add any more to that post, so I'll just start another one!

Still in Pisa, walking through the town...

orange building for Hannah

Some Roman ruins

What's that just past Chris' head?!?!

 

 

There it is!!!!

I have to say, it IS pretty impressive and cool. It's just so odd. You can climb it, but kids under 8 aren't allowed, and Chris wasn't so keen on taking Liam up (even though Liam reeeeally wanted to!) They only let 30 people up at a time, so the wait was pretty long.

See! There's a picture of me!

We kept trying to get the "holding up the tower picture" (this was the wrong side...whoops!) but it was hard to get far enough away to get the right perspective. You aren't allowed to walk on their pristine green lawns, and that's where you needed to go!

Sketching the tower with Grandma

Pushing the tower over

We didn't realize how lucky we were in our timing. The tower has been closed and wrapped up for restoration for quite some time, and only opened up again late in 2010. Here's a picture of the before and after in cleaning and restoration.

The church and bell tower (the leaning tower is actually the bell tower of the church)

The Arno river in Pisa

All in all, we really enjoyed Pisa and were so glad we went. We had thought of going on to Luca after Pisa, but it was enough - we'd done enough walking and we were all tired, so we went back to the train station and went home. I was so proud of the kids - they did A LOT of walking that day!

On the walk back to the apartment, Hannah really had to go to the bathroom, so I took her into a little pizzeria to use the bathroom (the world is your oyster when you have an adorable little girl in tow! Actually, business owners have been very gracious letting us use their facilities!)


Papa waited for us while everyone else carried on home. Since we were no longer in a rush, we decided to stop at the flower stall nearby to get some flowers. The kids have been taking turns picking them out (Grace picked some calla lillies, Katie picked a bunch of Gerbera daisies) Today it was Hannah's turn and she picked out some orange roses. The lady at the flower stall didn't speak any English, so I muddled through. She suggested another arrangement that was more masculine for Babo (Grandpa) but Hannah was quite insistant on the orange roses. She was so excited! After they were wrapped up and we were on our way, she was just bursting with pride and could hardly contain her joy carrying these flowers down the street!

Hannah and Babo

It was so sweet when we walked home (only another 2 blocks or so) Everyone was commenting on "the beautiful flowers for Babo" I thought all the little old nonnas were going to burst!

 

So thrilled!